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Suddenly no 3g, always H?!

My carrier had some little problems during the past weeks, aparently they were working on something. I sometimes, for short periods, did not have data connection or no servic at all. Now the problems are gone and a speedtest today showed that at my home, the download speed went from an average 1 Mbit to over 5 Mbit!
However, the H symbol won't go away anymore! It used to switch to 3g when not data was transferred. I assume that this will influence battery life.
Is there anything I should be worried?

From what I recall, H is faster than 3g, as long as your in a good signal area, the H will always be visable, it will only drop down to 3g if the area your in has no H signal... and if there is no 3g it will drop to a 2g signal... simples, having the H does not meen that data is being transfered!

I am aware of the different speed levels, what I experience now is that the H symbol stays all the time, whereas it used to change to 3g when idling even in areas with very good reception...

GMH24 said:
I am aware of the different speed levels, what I experience now is that the H symbol stays all the time, whereas it used to change to 3g when idling even in areas with very good reception...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wait, I don't get what you're saying. Let me clear it up:
Very good reception = H
Not so good reception = 3G
You want to see H (means HSDPA which is a a type of 3G data, but it's faster).

MrSimtang said:
Let me clear it up
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Okay, I'll try that too!
I live in an area with very good reception and therefore the phone used to switch from 3g to H whenever data was transfered and back . Now, however, it stays on H all the time and does not switch back to 3g when no traffic occurs.
It is just a change in the pattern my phone behaves so I wanted to get some info on that...

Hi, it's your phone doing what it should by seeking the best signal.

H refers to HSDPA which is based on UMTS (3G). Consider it a 'turbo' version of 3G. It's sometimes also referred to as 3G+ because it's faster then 3G but not really 4G technology. The tower in your area most likely got upgraded to HSDPA that's why you don't see the 3G icon anymore.
Sent from my GT-I9000M using XDA App

Not correct, he mentioned that his phone was using H on demand before, so the capability was there already.
The problem is that H mode uses more battery than 3G, which is why it normally only switches to H during data transfers instead of continously being on.
Possibly your provider made a change which forces your phone to stay in H mode. On hardcores homepage (see speedmod kernel thread) he describes a method to manually deactivate H mode if you want to play with it.
Hope that helps.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk

seems to be the explanation... Suddenly I have ~6 Mbit, so almost unsurprisingly there had to be a catch
as for disabling H, it would be permanently so not quite an option. I guess, I'll have to live with it but nevertheless I'll call customer support..

Hspa and 3g are actually different technologies, but can be used on the same site and freq. If you have noticed that your phone is nowdays all the time showing H ( hspa ) and not in 3g like before it means that your carrier has expanded their hspa features and capacity of the network on that area. Main difference between these two tech is of course the speed and how network resources are shared between the users. In 3g you have dedicated ones, but speed limited and in hspa you are sharing the resources between other ones under that cell area. hspa is good if you are near by the cell and there is not too many users from battery consumption point of aswell from througput point of view, 3g is better if you are on the cell edge due to dedicated resources reserved only for you. Main point is, battery consumption of your phone depends mainly how you use your phone ,what kind of applications you have and how often those are connecting/contacted by the network.
Browsing in 3g sucks!
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA Premium App

[Q] GMS/UMTS mode

Hey guys,
I was wondering what the difference between GSM and UMTS is, according to the settings of the LG Optimus 2X I can select GMS or UMTS or both.
Couldn't find the answer anywhere so I'm asking it here.
How do you guys have the settings set?
Using T-mobile btw (Netherlands).
Thanks in advantage

Hi,
I think gsm mode is called as 2G, umts as 3/3.5G ... 2G mode is save your battery but the data traffic will be slower. You can switch between them in settings/wireless settings/mobile networks/ and check or uncheck the only 2G network (or something similar, I've tried to translate the menu names from Hungarian). However, you can find a simple app in the Market to do it easier:
2G-3G OnOff (CurveFish)

Yes, 2G mode saves battery and offers slower download speeds. You can reach decent speed with EDGE @ 20-25-30 k/s. So If you don't need the speed of 3G, you can set the phone to GSM only mode.
On the other hand with 3.5G you can reach very good speeds (800k/s here in Bulgaria), but it drains the battery faster, even there are no active transfers.

So basically what you are both telling me is, just put the phone on GSM/UMTS (automode). Because I often use 3G/HSDPA.

Definitely!

CM7.1 cell standby costs 40% battery

Hey guys,
I flashed cm7.1 rc1, it's cool but I found the cell standby cost 40%, and phone idle also takes a lot of juice. My previous rom is arhd 1.10, on which the cell standby only takes 4%. I'm on the virgin's network in Canada. The virgin is acquired by Bell and of course it's using bell's network.
Is this network HSPA only? So in the *#*#4636#*#*, can I set the network mod as WCDMA only? Or by toggling 2G/3G to 3G only? Not sure if this will save some battery?

Switching to 2G only should save you a bit of battery. However, by far the best way to save battery is to switch mobile data off completely when you're not using it. I do this and my battery loses only 2 or 3% on standby overnight.

Switching to 2G wont work as Virgin Mobile/Bell does not have a 2G network backend like rogers or fido only 3G/4G so switching to 2g would make you have no service.

Yes. Virgin/Bell only use 1900MHz, the PCS band for their mobile communication, both voice and data.
In my opinion, use 3G only will save some power because the phone won't scan 2G frequency range. Moreover, setting the band as US band also will limit the scanning scope to save power. But after one day using, I didn't find much enhancement on battery life.

Ah, didn't know that. My apologies.

geeti said:
Yes. Virgin/Bell only use 1900MHz, the PCS band for their mobile communication, both voice and data.
In my opinion, use 3G only will save some power because the phone won't scan 2G frequency range. Moreover, setting the band as US band also will limit the scanning scope to save power. But after one day using, I didn't find much enhancement on battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They act trully. Use 850/1900, bands ( for get the band number ) also if your in a area of low to no signal it kills battery becuase the phone is continues to serch for a signal almost as bad as call for battery. Also give you phone a week to calabrate your battery
Sent from my HTC Incredible S using XDA Premium App

if not just calibrate your battery I switched back to android revolution just cause i couldn't deal with the terrible camera app in cyanogen mod. And now display is back to my number one battery killer.

this is a "feature" of CM7.1, i found too

Yes, I also conclude this is a feature of AOSP.
I thought this battery use is a transient value for each process on battery draining, but now I found this is an accumulative statistics. The cell standby and phone idle's high usage make sense.
In the stock firmware, the fact that display always takes majority of the juice doesn't make sense actually, cuz the screen isn't always turned on.

[Q] Stay on H+ rather than H connection

I have already disabled fast dormancy using *#9900# code in my Note, but now my phone switch between H and H+ icon. When connection is idel, it falls back to H. If I browse a webpage, it takes more than 10 seconds to connect to H+. And yes, H has no data trafic avalable. That means I have to wait the phone to change to H+ if I want to browse the internet.
Does anyone know how to stay with H+ icon?

OMG no one knows?

I think it depends on your rom..

sunny7day said:
I have already disabled fast dormancy using *#9900# code in my Note, but now my phone switch between H and H+ icon. When connection is idel, it falls back to H. If I browse a webpage, it takes more than 10 seconds to connect to H+. And yes, H has no data trafic avalable. That means I have to wait the phone to change to H+ if I want to browse the internet.
Does anyone know how to stay with H+ icon?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It depends on your Network and rom + modem u using.
Post the details here and lets see what the community here can find.

Data works fine on H. It certainly seems faster on H+, but, as you say, the phone spends so long finding and connecting, the speed is wasted. I'd be happy to stay on H myself.
I agree, it would be nice to keep to one. My connection jumps from 3g to H to H+ and even to E, especially when moving on a train.

I think it is network dependent
E - Edge 2G
H - 3G
H+ - 3.5G
When you set your network mode to auto, it searches for faster avaiable network. If you set it to only WCDMA, you won't get E, but i think there is no setting to select 3G/3.5G.
Another problem to select WCDMA is, whenever any place dont have 3G coverage, your network will lost.

In germany it is also other:
G - gprs up to 56kpbs
E - edge up to 128kbps
3G - umts up 384 kbps
H - HSPA up to 14 mbps
H+ - extended hspa up to 21mbps
But H+ is only active when it is needed and it is all carrierer depending. If i am on H+ i can se my battery dying
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It is network related there's nothing your phone can do about it.
H+ is actually using the 64QAM modulation over the air interface which gives you 50% more throughput ideally than H.
3G is up to 384kbps
H is up to 14.4Mbps (16QAM)
H+ is up to 21Mbps
The above is the throughput on the lower levels, so at the application level you will get around 10% less (and that's if you are alone using the base station and your carrier is not limiting your throughput)
Everything that goes through wireless interfaces has to be shared between users. Therefore, the network has to manage valuable and limited resources to serve everyone and provide a best effort service. In order to do that, idle users or users below a certain threshold will be down switched from H+ to H (this usually happens due to radio signal conditions) and to 3G. After that it kicks you back to idle mode, so even if it says H, your actually not connected until a new session is triggered and based on your needs and availability, you are up switched to a faster channel.
Depending on each country and their marketing:
2G
2.5G is GPRS (G)
2.75G is EDGE (E)
3G
3.5G is HSPA (H)
3.9G (4G in the US) is HSPA+
4G is LTE
Fast dormancy is a new feature on 3G networks (not available in most networks yet) that improves your switching between different channels (H+, H, 3G, idle, ....) and it has a major impact on your battery life and the speed of establishing a new data connection once you are idle. This is also controlled by your network. Anyway, some people believe that turning it off while it is not supported by your network can help improving battery life. Which I don't think is true, since by turning it off you are forcing your mobile to ignore this new feature (and if it doesn't exist there's nothing to ignore anyway) and turning it off shouldn't have any effect unless it is active on the network and your carrier is not managing it correctly.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using xda premium

There is a short code for turning off h+ my phone would always time out when trying to connect to h+ so disabled it. And it works great now, can't for the life of me remember what the short code is though!

Alexanderbooth said:
There is a short code for turning off h+ my phone would always time out when trying to connect to h+ so disabled it. And it works great now, can't for the life of me remember what the short code is though!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is there a code to turn on H+ too? Because my phone used to show H+ but now it only shows H although I have not changed any settings.

Disable 4g for good? Possible at all?

Hi folks
Today I got my i9305 (swapped for i9300).
I'm not interested at all in 4G, it's the 2GB ram i was craving for. Anyways, is it possible to disable 4g completely?
I read 3G and 4G both use the same chip/antenna and therefore disabling 4g is not possible without killing 3g too. Is that true? Would be a bit of a bummer but in the end I stick to edge anyways and fire 3g/4g only up when really needed and disable it asap.
Also, I read the new 3g/4g chip is more energy hungry than the 3g-only chip, even if only 3g networks are selected.
Can someone elaborate on this?

I dont think there is a big difference in battery performance

You can choose WCDMA only on the mobile network options and 4G will be off. I'm not sure if 2G will be off too, though.

Perseus Kernel has some lte energy tweaks.
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shaz2sxy said:
I dont think there is a big difference in battery performance
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are dead wrong.
LTE is power hungry, the i9305 has the same battery as the i9300, you will notice a battery drop.
@OP, I saw somewhere the "trick" to get 4g on the nexus 4, maybe you can try that and see if it works to disable 4g? search it up, it's a code in the dialer.

nop56773 said:
You can choose WCDMA only on the mobile network options and 4G will be off. I'm not sure if 2G will be off too, though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
WCDMA is 3G only. GSM is 2G. The S3 is really missing a setting for WCDMA/GSM only.. this would effectively block 4G and only allow 2G, 3G, HSDPA and HSUPA. I don't need 4G, even for normal browsing HSDPA is pretty fast. Would love the WCDMA/GSM option!
---------- Post added at 09:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:46 PM ----------
btemtd posted this in the Pandoriam thread - use at your own will and take responsibility if anything messes up
*#197328640# and then go to UMTS->Debug Screen->Phone Control->Network Control->Band Selection would be what one would want to lock only into certain bands like maybe the ones that are not lte

quantumtraveler said:
WCDMA is 3G only. GSM is 2G. The S3 is really missing a setting for WCDMA/GSM only.. this would effectively block 4G and only allow 2G, 3G, HSDPA and HSUPA. I don't need 4G, even for normal browsing HSDPA is pretty fast. Would love the WCDMA/GSM option!
---------- Post added at 09:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:46 PM ----------
btemtd posted this in the Pandoriam thread - use at your own will and take responsibility if anything messes up
*#197328640# and then go to UMTS->Debug Screen->Phone Control->Network Control->Band Selection would be what one would want to lock only into certain bands like maybe the ones that are not lte
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
cool, thanks for the hint. But I wonder, does this disable the 4G modem? I think what it does is tell the phone to ignore 4g signals in favor of 3g, but the 4g module is still on (and thus consuming power).
If the 3g and 4g modems are actually on the same chip, we're phucked :silly: I believe this is the case, but I still need someone to confirm this...

afaik 4G will only be active if your contract/the area you are in supports it.
Same scenario for 2G/3G. If your phone is on 3G it will not be using 2G at the same time. Unless you are actually on 4G your 4G is NOT active. I can easily see this as I have both the 9300 and 9305 on which I get very similar battery performance (rom dependant of course). If 4G was active then this would not be the case.
Yes LTE is power hungry but only if you are using it!!!
Point is I notice NO difference between the phones battery so do not overthink the situation and just enjoy the phone.
EDIT: Check this out, will have to see if it actually makes any difference in battery preformance though!
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=35073360#post35073360

chippyuk said:
afaik 4G will only be active if your contract/the area you are in supports it.
Same scenario for 2G/3G. If your phone is on 3G it will not be using 2G at the same time. Unless you are actually on 4G your 4G is NOT active. I can easily see this as I have both the 9300 and 9305 on which I get very similar battery performance (rom dependant of course). If 4G was active then this would not be the case.
Yes LTE is power hungry but only if you are using it!!!
Point is I notice NO difference between the phones battery so do not overthink the situation and just enjoy the phone.
EDIT: Check this out, will have to see if it actually makes any difference in battery preformance though!
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=35073360#post35073360
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Alright, thanks for your input. I'll take your word for it I just got i9305 yesterday (switched from i9300). I have yet to evaluate the battery behaviour. The WCDMA/GSM Auto option you linked to sure is a must have!

I have Korean Galaxy S3 with 2GB RAM.......from the dial pad i can enter a code and go to hidden settings menu....there i can select gsm/wcdma/lte only options.......... as I don't have a LTE connection but my operator and phone supports it.....in the beginning i got network error messages....although the network connection was always stable and i wasn't disconnected......
so what i guessed from this was that LTE modem was on and even i was connected to 3g it searched for lte and then got rejected by operator and gave error...
so i went to hidden menu and selected "WCDMA only" and now i don't get that error and always connected on 3g.....
from this i conclude that it has stopped searching for LTE connection but is the modem actually turned off.....i don't know...
maybe you can make some sense of this....

Just use a 3G sim.
I've got the LTE, and am using my previous 3G sim on a 3G plan.

You can switch off LTE by installing and app called "Phone Info" from the Play Store.
And under device info set network selection to "WCDMA Preferred". This is essentially the WCDMA/GSM option you're looking for.
I did that and my battery life is much better.

PhoneInfo
flashvc said:
You can switch off LTE by installing and app called "Phone Info" from the Play Store.
And under device info set network selection to "WCDMA Preferred". This is essentially the WCDMA/GSM option you're looking for.
I did that and my battery life is much better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yip PhoneInfo works well. You can use WCDMA preferred (this will prefer 3G/HSDPA over 2G) or GSM/CDMA PRL auto (this will go with the stronger signal)

flashvc said:
You can switch off LTE by installing and app called "Phone Info" from the Play Store.
And under device info set network selection to "WCDMA Preferred". This is essentially the WCDMA/GSM option you're looking for.
I did that and my battery life is much better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you have a 4G sim/contract as I can only see this being of benefit if you can actually use 4G or if your network supports it and it tries to connect via 4G before realising your contract does not support 4G. Otherwise it will not use 4G anyway. As I mentioned above I can easily see this as I have both the 9300 and 9305.
I do not have time at the moment but will try next week and see if it actually makes any difference to battery life. Would be nice if it does!

Yeah, I have LTE provisioned on my contract, there's nothing special about the sim though. To be honest I have no idea if the phone will try to attach on LTE and then just fail in the case that you don't have LTE provisioned and as a result use more battery?
Sent from my GT-P7500 using Tapatalk 2

Guess only some good old tests will tell us but as I do not really notice any difference in battery life between the 9300 and 9305 (I do not have an LTE contract) I am not holding my breath though but hope to be pleasantly surprised!

This will information not be of much use but anyways:
I was abroad for 4 days and thus had mobile data connection turned off, only using regular cell phone connectivitgy for calls/sms and wifi in between.
The battery life was downright amazing, never managed to get it below 50% for an entire day, even when taking pictures, using wifi + whatsapp and doing calls all the time. I even did play games in between.
No surprise, but still, when mobile data is off and you rely solely on wifi, bettry life is outstanding :good:

Vipeout said:
Alright, thanks for your input. I'll take your word for it I just got i9305 yesterday (switched from i9300). I have yet to evaluate the battery behaviour. The WCDMA/GSM Auto option you linked to sure is a must have!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well having tested for over a full day now, I can safely say I see NO difference at all in having 4G disabled if you are not actually on 4G.

Skander1998 said:
You are dead wrong.
LTE is power hungry, the i9305 has the same battery as the i9300, you will notice a battery drop.
@OP, I saw somewhere the "trick" to get 4g on the nexus 4, maybe you can try that and see if it works to disable 4g? search it up, it's a code in the dialer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i dont think he is wrong at all..
I have Owned a I9300 And I have had the EXACT same battery expereince. So why is he wrong?
Your not ON LTE 24/7 it automatically picks up LTE when needed and Only if you are using the internet. I use the internet the same as the I9300 and I still had to charge my phone every night just like the I9305. I have all widgets that need Network connection and I Always have it set on auto 4g/3g/2g . 100% there is no difference at all. If I use powersaving mode and use my phone on occassion i can have it last almost 2 full days even with LTE set this is with stock kernel. And this is the same i had with the I9300 on stock rom.
But i always use the phone OC at 1700 No undervolt Always have lte on auto. And I using perseus Kenerl and i charge my phone before i sleep. Which is what i did with the I9300 when i had it OC
All this talk about dramatic battery drain.. I dont see it

So is there a problem with battery drain or not ?
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